


third year

by odayaka



Category: Hinatazaka46 (Band), Keyakizaka46 (Band)
Genre: F/F, hiragana keyaki days, thus the keyaki tag
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-30 18:09:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19408609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/odayaka/pseuds/odayaka
Summary: "When do you plan to graduate from Hiragana Keyaki?"





	third year

**Author's Note:**

> i wrote this in a flash and you can probably tell from the quality (or lack thereof)
> 
> happy graduation memi! (((((;_;))))))

“Mana, over here,” Memi says with a hand very lightly hitting the floor just beside her. Her bangs cling to her face, glued by perspiration.

Mana makes a mental note to crank up the air conditioner later when Memi is done making her a makeshift Depression Cushion.

Sometimes Kakizaki Memi _does_ look surprisingly, crushingly human. That time is right now, when there’s only the two of them, existences too small for a practice room made for twenty and more, countenances too dim for the too-bright lighting. She looks at Memi, or rather, her reflection across the large, dance studio mirror walling one-fourth of the room. There’s a scowl on her face that will soon beget into mumbled complains as she mesh her body against Mana’s side. That’s how it usually goes. It’s their routine of sorts.

Mana sets herself beside Memi, cross-legged. It feels only natural to do so.

The twist is that Memi doesn’t lean into her. Instead, she’s boring steel-hard stare onto Mana’s reflection in the mirror. The real Mana raises her brows in question.

“I’m a big girl now. I can’t rely on you all the time.” Memi more or less answers, more or less unprompted, and Mana slightly wonders if Memi is talking to her or _herself_.

Mana opts for a harmless non-reply. “Seventeen is hardly an adult.”

“Seventeen is closer to twenty than, say, fifteen, so I’m technically an adult now.” For reasons unknown, Memi straightens her sitting posture, and Mana can’t help but find it comical. “I’m an adult now.”

“Why—what made you suddenly think so?” Mana tries a stifled laugh that comes forced instead. The worry has gotten to her throat.

It gets _funnier_ when Memi starts turning the upper half of her body around as if to give her joints a pop. Mana heaves a laugh into the back of her palm when Memi’s efforts to pop her seventeen years old joints don’t produce even the faintest of popping crackles.

“You’re lucky the others are going on a stroll for snacks. Kumi and Shiho would’ve poked fun at you.”

What pops next is a tinge of pinkish red across Memi’s cheeks as she huffs at her.

“So, you wanna tell me what’s bothering you?”

“Nothing’s bothering me—I just think I should act more like an adult.”

“What’s being adult to you?”

“Hmmm.” The practice room lighting douses Memi in a slight yellow, and it accentuates the pensive puff of her cheeks. “Like Kumi, maybe. Having a full, steady control of her life.”

Mana takes the hint. “I guess it’s natural for you to start thinking about your future. You’re in your third-year after all,”

“Yeah,”

“High school. Not Hiragana.”

Memi’s smaller “ _yeah_ ” comes a beat later than expected.

“I know you love Hiragana a ton. More than me – or anyone here, even. So there’s not much to think about that, but high school, and what you’re going to do after… I get that. There’s—a lot to mull over.”

“Hmmm.”

“So… college?”

“Hmmm…”

“No adult would keep humming to questions!”

Memi rumbles into a wry laughter. “It’s harder than I thought. Being an adult, I mean.”

After all, Memi joined the group the same time she entered high school. The doe-eyed, fifteen years old Kakizaki Memi who walked into the audition with the greenest steps. She _is_ Hiragana Keyakizaka in the essence that both her and Hiragana Keyakizaka mature together, in slowest and surest steps.

“So I guess, Hiragana Keyakizaka is growing up soon, too.”

“Hm—oh, next year will be our third year.”

“Yeah.”

“Mana, here,”

Mana turns her head around and gazes at the non-reflection Memi, still doe-eyed even years later, with the surest, greenest smile – lightly patting her shoulder, as if motioning Mana to…

“I’m grown-up now. You can rest against me.”

When Mana only blinks, Memi speeds up the pats until creases begin to appear around her brows.

“Mana!”

Mana can feel Memi staggering a little when she lightly crashes herself ashore on Memi’s side, shifting half her weight onto the younger girl. Then comes their laughter, filling enough for the practice room made for twenty and more. Then comes Memi’s botched “ _you can rely on me_ ”, which she makes fun of not even a second later, and then comes Memi’s weight pressing back against her as they crumble backwards, back-first on the floor.

The ceiling doesn’t feel as far. Maybe they’ve grown bigger.

“Memi?”

“Yeah?”

“At what age do you plan to graduate from Hiragana?”

“Hmm. Twenty-seven, maybe?”

Mana laughs, feeling younger than ever. “Then I’ll hang around until I’m twenty-nine.”


End file.
